Launch of madbot: a new tool for managing and sharing scientific data

The launch of madbot, announced in preview at the All-Hands IFB/ELIXIR-FR meeting in early December 2025, is now available to the scientific community. Researchers and research stakeholders can now explore, test and use madbot to organise, orchestrate and publish their scientific data in a simpler and more efficient way.

Developed by IFB, madbot is a tool designed to assist researchers in managing, describing and sharing their scientific data. With the continuous increase in the volume of research data, it is becoming increasingly complex to guarantee its accessibility, reusability and comprehension in the long term.

Madbot addresses these challenges by offering an automated, standardised and flexible solution that complies with international metadata standards. It enables data to be structured and described in a consistent manner, while saving considerable time at this stage.

This new tool provides a shared space that allows users to:

• to try out madbot’s features,
• to benefit from early access to improvements and new modules,
• to contribute to the development of the tool by sharing feedback and suggestions.

By opening this process, the choice has been made to adopt a transparent approach, developed jointly with the community, in order to best meet the needs of researchers.

Thanks to its intuitive interface, madbot is accessible even to users without technical expertise. Behind the scenes, the tool automates data organisation, checks data quality and detects potential errors to ensure reliable, high-quality metadata.

Madbot also integrates with international platforms and infrastructures such as Zenodo and ENA (European Nucleotide Archive), allowing researchers to easily submit their data directly to these repositories.

Designed on an extensible architecture, madbot can be adapted to different research contexts: it facilitates the integration of new metadata standards, storage solutions or data repositories, thus ensuring optimal interoperability with existing infrastructures.

In the coming weeks, several developments will enhance the platform:

• adding new features and plugins,
• provision of tutorials and documentation,
• collecting user feedback in order to continuously improve the platform.

By simplifying data storage and sharing, madbot is fully committed to open science, removing barriers to the dissemination of data and research results while promoting their reuse by the international scientific community.

On 14 January, Imane Messak, Baptiste Rousseau and Elora Vigo were guests on JeBif to present madbot in the first BioStream of the year. BioStream is the monthly live show on YouTube and Twitch by the Association of Young Bioinformaticians of France (JeBif)! Didn’t see it? Watch the replay on YouTube!

Would you like to learn more, discover the tool, and contribute to its development?